


Old Plague

by chaosintheavenue



Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Blood, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Illnesses, Plague, Quarantine mentions, Unhappy Ending, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosintheavenue/pseuds/chaosintheavenue
Summary: In medieval Wales, a family's quiet, peaceful, settled life is thrown into turmoil when a dreaded sickness strikes. Imaginatively-titled 'remaster' of New Plague written for Whumptober 2020 Day 20- Medieval.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956136
Kudos: 2
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Old Plague

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [New Plague](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842373) by [chaosintheavenue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosintheavenue/pseuds/chaosintheavenue). 



> Clarification for new readers: This is a rewrite- or 'remaster', as I've been calling it- of the first section of a fic I wrote a long time ago that featured a disease from the Fallout universe called the New Plague, titled just that. I'm not great at titles, as you might guess...
> 
> Clarification for peeps who found this in the Fallout (Video Games) category: Be warned that this is only tagged as such because the characters are AU versions of Fallout OCs (who aren't particularly linked to that setting even in their original form), and there's not really any Fallout content in here at all! I just didn't have anything else to tag it as lol.
> 
> Quick summary of name changes:  
> Jolanus = James  
> Jasce = JJ (I couldn't figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced, but I've been going with 'Yas-keh', based somewhat on the pronunciation of the seemingly similar 'Jaskier'!)  
> Catarine = Catherine
> 
> Please forgive the short length, somewhat unimaginitive writing and lack of historical accuracy!

Jolanus:

'The black death', they called it. Rumours of a disease rampaging to the east had echoed around the valley for months. This plague ravaged and tainted all that it touched, and left few survivors. First hit, it had seemed, was Llandudno. Word followed that it had crawled along the coast to Conwy, and most recently struck Bangor- much too close for comfort. Still, there was little to indicate that our village was at risk... although for safety, I did ask my wife Catarine and son Jasce to do what they could to avoid trading with town-dwellers for a little while.

Jasce- now a tall and bold young man of eighteen years- has always been stubborn, so it was to be expected that it took Catarine pointing out that he looked incredibly pale for him to admit that he'd been feeling 'off', as he worded it, for a day or two. With his 'secret' out, he immediately suggested that he retire to bed early to rest.

Somehow noticing for the first time that he had dark circles under both eyes and generally did not look well at all, I quickly agreed that extra sleep was exactly what he needed, but a growing sense of unease appeared in my mind. Hearing him pause mid-staircase to catch his breath only added to the feeling that something was terribly wrong, but foolish denial was beginning to set in, and I managed to convince myself that he was probably just exhausted after a long day carting timber down from the mountain, or in a little pain, or both. Either way, he would escape it when he fell asleep...

I would have taken rest myself shortly thereafter, had the Lord not so intensely and frequently planted warnings of the severity of Jasce's mysterious illness in my mind. Barely five minutes after he had decided to rest, I could no longer fight the almost compulsive urge to check on him.

When I did, I found him lying haphazardly across our bed (in the closest room to the stairs), writhing and moaning slightly as if he couldn't find a comfortable position. I remember seeing his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and approaching him to see if he had a fever (intending to arrange an urgent visit from the village doctor if so), but as I drew closer, he contorted his body in a manner that exposed the grotesque, discoloured swelling in his armpit.

I barely allowed myself to consider what this meant as I stepped backwards and forwards for a while in a bizarre dance of self-preservation versus the instinct to be with my boy.

"Catarine... f-fetch the doctor. _Quickly_."

Jasce was restored to full alertness by the sound of my voice and subsequent slam of the door as his mother hurried away, staring up at me helplessly with the terrified eyes of a mortally wounded animal.

"Son, how long have you been unwell?" I had to ask, as dread knotted in my stomach. Visions of the many people that he had associated with that day being struck down by the same evil flashed through my mind. Please, God, spare our village from this horror...

"I _wasn't_..." he managed to gasp, blood splattering his pale lips as he coughed, "F-Father, I... I'm sorry, b-but I think it may be the plague..."

"As do I..." I confessed, barely concealing the undercurrent of fear in my voice. With the boy already so weakened, clearly this was not going to be a smooth journey.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> This was actually the first of my Whumptober ideas to get started, and I've been chipping away at it in very small segments all month because, oddly enough, I have to consume a lot of medieval-themed content before I can get into the right headspace to work on it... and often I ended up getting too carried away with that to remember to write. For now, I've run out of steam slightly, so I'm publishing what I have so far, with the disclaimer that it may be subject to future edits. There will hopefully be a second chapter soon, but as a forewarning, it will just be pure, unadulterated JJ/Jasce torment...
> 
> You may notice that Jasce is eighteen, whereas the original JJ is fifteen at this point in the narrative. This was changed purely for my own sake. The original JJ survives his ordeal, so I didn't feel quite as bad about him being a child (plus his age was a reference to the number 115, which... is relevant), but Jasce- well, let's just say that I didn't particularly want to depict the graphic death of a fifteen year old. ("But Chaos, you killed a six year old the same way!" I did, yep, but not on-page!)
> 
> Also, I did originally try researching a Scandinavian setting for this, since the original family's last name is Jensen and I envision them being Swedish-American. But I came up empty-handed, and so resorted to Wales instead. And as a final note, the random town names being listed at the very start were to hint that the village is in the same location as a modern town called... Bethesda.


End file.
